Between Sex and Death
Somewhere between my grandfather
talking about suicide again
and the cockeyed white hairs
sprouting from my eyebrows,
I have found my fear of death.
And it should come as no surprise
that I wanted to make love
as daylight returns salt to the ocean,
to shove and come and then sleep
as though nothing were the matter.
You might easily call this escape
but from an evolutionary standpoint,
haven’t the ones who lived
always had an inexplicable yearning
driving them towards sex and rest?
To propagate the species, yes,
but the hope I cling to
is that death—that great surrender—
is at least a cousin of sleep
and what I feel inside you:
that eros, agape, even logos are
spilling into some great ocean
but suddenly it makes perfect sense
to lay our nameless remainders
one beside the other, to rest
like ants within their city
or angels after some great battle,
everything silenced, so still
we could stop breathing
and it wouldn’t matter.
Morning Suckle
She rises full of milk
like the moon
under its gown of
blue clouds and
into the waxing crescent
she fits herself.
She smiles—just a little tired—
as yard of her soul
are pumped out, then
returns to her bed
and the warmth she left:
a husband watching how
easily she gives herself away,
how purely she loses
and gains at the same time,
going deeper than he ever will
into the quiet truth of
living, and in these
moments he tries
his best not to hate her.
Advent
We meet God like a child
who has never been weaned.
In our veins
the rushing blue milk
from which stars draw their lights,
pulsing like all the poems
never spoken but now,
the romance of darkness
has passed. For we have known
the warmth of others, and died
as only the gods may do—
mad to be born,
mad to go back.
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Copyright © 2004 Michael Meyerhofer
